


Different

by The_improbable_one



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: F/F, Pupcake - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:21:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28150800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_improbable_one/pseuds/The_improbable_one
Summary: Patsy focussed Pupcake one-shot, set just before she joins Nonnatus in season 3 episode 5 and looking back at aspects of Patsy's life (and hair) to that point.All her life, Patsy had been different and it had very rarely turned out to be a good thing.
Relationships: Delia Busby & Patsy Mount, Delia Busby/Patsy Mount
Comments: 9
Kudos: 34





	Different

**Author's Note:**

> Hello lovely Pupcake readers!  
> This little one-shot idea has been playing on my mind for a little while, and whilst I'm still writing 'Can I see you before you go?' this little idea wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it.  
> In my head Patsy is naturally ginger, firstly because I adore her red hair and secondly because her hair is basically yellow in season 2 and nothing like Emerald's lovely natural blonde. This story is inspired by the idea that the blonde is bleached and why.  
> I hope you enjoy!  
> Warning: includes references to Patsy's time in the POW camp and injuries sustained there, but nothing too heavy I think

***

"Pats?" Delia asked, playing with a lock of her girlfriend's hair. 

It had been such a long time since they'd had an evening like this, alone and curled up on Delia's single bed in the nurse's home. Patsy's blonde head rested on Delia's chest and both women relished in the comfort of it. Ever since Patsy started her midwifery training, they'd hardly had 5 spare minutes together, and now that Patsy had finished her final exams, a cloud of uncertainty had descended upon them. Who knew where Patsy would end up? She could be asked to go to any number of hospitals. How could they possibly continue their already impossible relationship long distance? 

A thousand questions of their precarious future swirled around Delia's head, but the one she asked out loud was entirely unrelated and left field. 

"Are you a natural blonde?" She mused, still twirling the lock of hair, though she wasn't sure what prompted her to ask. 

Patsy stifled a snort, "no... I'm not a natural blonde Deels, I rather thought you knew that!" 

"What's your colour?" Delia asked, shocked that she wasn't already privy to this information. 

"Promise you won't laugh." The bottle-blonde replied. 

"Why would I laugh?" Delia was thoroughly puzzled now. 

"I'm a redhead." Patsy sighed, bracing herself for the inevitable giggle. 

When it didn't arrive, she was bemused. 

*  
All her life, Patsy had been different and it had very rarely turned out to be a good thing. 

In the prisoner of war camp that she'd been forced to grow up in, the first rule of survival was to never draw attention to oneself; being invisible was imperative to survival. Unfortunately, Patsy's flame-red hair made invisibility impossible. She stuck out like a beacon in the sea of blonde-haired Dutch children and mousey Brits. No woman or child wanted to be singled out, extra attention inevitably meant extra punishment. Patsy tried to do everything right, tried to stay hidden, tried so very hard to live up to the impossible standards set by the Japanese soldiers, but the system was rigged. Easily identifiable, too-tall-for-her-age Patsy was a prime target and became one of the unlucky scapegoats for the trivial misdemeanours of all the detained children. At least it kept the brunt of the brutality away from her sister, she often told herself as she bathed her injuries with a filthy rag. Even so, she longed to blend into the crowd and began to resent the bright copper hair her mother had once so lovingly brushed and plaited for her. 

*

When the war was over and she arrived at boarding school, still half-starved and fresh off the ship from Singapore, she found she was different once again. Too pale to be considered exotic, but too foreign to be thought truly English, Patsy's experiences were worlds away from those of her peers. The girls at her new school couldn't fathom her, but it wasn't their fault; they'd never known hardship of any sort. None of them had even been evacuated, there was no need, their families were all the sort to have country homes to send the children to outside of term time. Their fathers hadn't seen active service either, they were spared by their fortunes and social standing.

No, their lives had remained much unchanged whilst the war waged around them, to them it was little more than a game played on distant battlefields and bombed cities. The closest any of them had come to loss was the girl whose family's empty Kensington town house was partially damaged in an air raid. They couldn't comprehend that Patsy had lost everything.

Her mother, her sister, her home, herself.

Where their wartime struggle was mild inconvenience when the school could no longer obtain meat on the black market, Patsy's was literal starvation.

Patsy understood the other girls, she'd have been one of them once upon a time, but that was before. Now she knew better, and thus they never did see eye to eye. 

She soon discovered that 12-year-olds could be just as cruel as Japanese soldiers. Only their weapons of choice were words, not batons. Unable to comprehend the measure of their insurmountable differences and the raw grief that consumed her, it was Patsy's hair that the other girls homed in on. 

Carrot Top. 

Matchstick. 

Ginger Nut. 

The taunts stung, as did the willowy canes of the Catholic Nuns who often caught her sleeping in class or at mealtimes. The nuns didn't care that Patsy couldn't sleep at night for the nightmares. Didn't care that the lashings rained down upon old wounds. The scars on the backs of her thighs were still angry and painful. 

She quickly realised that she'd only swapped one prison for another. This time at least, she had two things she didn't before; adequate food and a firm end date. 

Discovering her talent for fencing gave her some release and won the respect of some of the girls, but it was too late by then. 

Patsy had already built the walls around her heart. 

She hid. 

She waited. 

She survived. 

And when the time came, Patsy stepped out of her second cage a young woman. 

She was not whole or healed as her father had hoped, but she was alive, and she was much stronger than the little motherless girl she once was. School was just a stepping-stone, a necessary evil on her road to what she felt was her true calling. Nursing. She didn't believe in a divine being, or a greater plan, but she knew her in her own mind that nursing was what she was meant to do. 

*

Training was where she would finally be safe. Where she would be around women who felt as passionately about healing people as she did. Where she would finally fit in. She hoped. 

And just in case, she bleached her hair blonde. 

It was lucky she did, she soon realised. The young women here were cut from much the same cloth as her schoolmates. Most had no passion or even desire to nurse, only to marry dashing junior doctors.

Therein lay Patsy's difference. She didn’t share their ambitions, her own were entirely career oriented. In part because she had no desire for any man. She knew she should pretend, but the very idea made her skin crawl. 

Again, she hid herself, tried her best to deflect attention from the opposite sex without invoking the suspicion of the other nurses. It was a fine line to tread; rebuffing the unwanted advances, swallowing the bile in her throat and somehow not giving herself away. 

This one wasn’t a problem that a trip to a hair salon could fix. 

Luckily, by now she was pretty darn good at hiding who she really was, even from herself. 

In some of her weaker moments, Patsy wondered why she was this way. What had caused her inclination towards the fairer sex? Was it the cruel conditions of the camp? Was it being surrounded by girls at boarding school? Was it issues with her father? 

No. 

Patsy knew it was none of those things. Those things were circumstantial, things that had happened _to_ her. This was simply the way that she was made. 

*

She remembered the first time she felt the pull of attraction towards another female. She was just 6 years old when she'd had a crush on her governess. 

Sweet, young Patsy was so infatuated that one day she asked the woman to marry her, in the innocent way that children do. 

She hadn't expected such stern words from her lovely nanny. 

"No, Patsy. I will not. I will marry a gentleman, and so shall you one day. Do not speak of such nonsense again." 

Marry a man? That didn't sit right in Patsy's stomach. She didn't want to marry a man. Men (her father aside) were scratchy and smelly. Her nanny was soft and smelled of sweet perfume. 

"But I don't want to! I want to marry you, I love you!" She'd pouted, indignantly, expecting her governess to bow to her demands. 

"No Patience. Listen to me very carefully. Girls do not marry other girls; it would be unnatural. Immoral. Abhorrent. Do not speak of this again or I shall be forced to tell your father." The young lady's usually pretty face twisted with disgust until it was quite ugly. 

Little Patsy found that she didn't want to marry her anymore anyway. 

Unnatural and immoral - she understood those words, but she wouldn't learn the meaning of the word abhorrent for years to come. 

And by the time she did, her spirit was already broken. 

So, she learned to be careful. To play her cards close to her chest. 

*

And then came Delia. 

Beautiful Delia. 

Caring Delia. 

Break-down-all-of-your-carefully-constructed-barriers Delia. 

And Delia loved her. 

Patsy wasn't sure why, or even how, she only knew that it was true. Now more than ever, as she extracted herself from Delia's embrace to look at her, expecting to see some trace of amusement or taunting but finding neither on Delia's lovely face. 

Perhaps Patsy was over-reacting, it was only a hair colour after all. 

"I've always had a bit of a thing for red heads" Delia said, sincerely. "You should dye it back."

Patsy thought about it for a minute. Bleaching her hair had been a way to fit in with the other nursing recruits, to conform to their expectations of what a young nurse should look like, act like, think like. 

But she wasn't like them and she never would be. 

The difference was now she realised she didn't want to be. 

Nursing was her calling. It led her to Delia and subsequently love she'd believed lost to her from being 6 years old. 

For the first time, Patsy was happy with who she was.

She was done trying to win the acceptance of airheaded girls she had nothing in common with, which was one of the reasons she'd chosen to train as a midwife. Midwifery was hard work and only serious nurses chose to pursue it; like Jenny Lee.

Suddenly Patsy knew what she would do. She wouldn't wait to see which hospital she'd be posted to when her exam results were published. She wouldn't risk being sent out of the East End, and she'd had enough of hospitals anyway. It would be perfect. Poplar was only down the road from Whitechapel, really. And that way they could still be together. 

Patsy was going to apply to Nonnatus House. 

And when she did, she'd have ginger hair. 

*** 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> Kudos and Comments are absolutely adored (if you feel this merits them)
> 
> Merry Christmas and stay safe friends x


End file.
